Why Our Town? When Newport-born thespian Michael Sheen announced last year that Thornton Wilder’s canonised 1938 play would be the inaugural production for his new Welsh National Theatre (an ambitious, self-funded replacement for the recently shuttered National Theatre Wales), it seemed, perhaps, an odd choice. Set in the fictional New Hampshire town of Grover’s Corners, Our Town is about as Welsh as corn dogs or Super Bowl Sunday.
And yet, watching Francesca Goodridge’s assured production at the Rose Theatre, I’m struck by just how apt a selection this was. Sheen (also the artistic director of the WNT) plays the stage manager, Our Town’s fourth wall-breaking narrator – a cute metatextual idea in a play that’s already full of them. He waxes lyrical to the audience, then prowls the sidelines as we witness the goings-on in Grover’s Corners, much of it concerning a teenage love affair between the sweet, oblivious George (Peter Devlin) and the bright but insecure Emily (Yasemin Özdemir).
The first two acts of Our Town are a spiriting evocation of small-town life at the beginning of the 20th century, often wise and often funny; the two sets of parents (George’s played by Sian Reese-Williams and Matthew Trevannion, Emily’s by Nia Roberts and Rhodri Meilir) are particular standouts. Our Town is traditionally staged with minimal props and set decoration, and designer Hayley Grindle here does a lot with a little: flourishes that are included are purposeful and richly symbolic.
Sheen is surely the play’s big selling point – he’s all over the advertising – and the Stage Manager is a role that has a lot of serious history behind it. (Previous actors to have played the part include Paul Newman, Orson Welles, and Henry Fonda.) He’s good, here, albeit entirely within his comfort zone: big, loud, and avuncular seems increasingly his modus operandi these days. That said, when the play returns from intermission, Sheen proves he has the nuance needed for the show’s elegiac gut-punch of a third act.
In choosing such a time-tested classic for its inaugural play, the Welsh National Theatre is, presumably, seeking to establish a sense of tradition, rooted in something old and far-reaching. Its second production, an original Welsh play by Gary Owen, will be a stark – and presumably deliberate – counterpoint.
If there’s something a little wooly about the way Our Town has been transposed to Wales – the actors all use their own Welsh accents, but plenty of the specifically American references of the play remain untweaked – then it’s ultimately a confusion that serves the play’s message. Our Town was never really about Grover’s Corners, USA. It’s about life, in the most universal sense. And this production captures that expertly.
‘Our Town’ is at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, until 28 March
